Today, at the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences' Institute of History, a set of records has been preserved, documenting significant events in the history of the Shanghai workers' movement, such as the "May 30th Movement" and the three armed uprisings of workers. These materials, collected from 1953 to 1958 through interviews and speeches from individuals familiar with these events, are collectively referred to as the "Old Worker Interview Records." The historical materials cover a wide range of experiences, including the daily lives of Shanghai workers in the 1920s and their involvement in revolutionary activities, as well as the deeds of early leaders of the Chinese Communist Party's labor movement. As such, they hold considerable research value in the study of Shanghai's labor movement history and early CCP history. However, due to various reasons, these materials have not been widely used in academic research, which seems disproportionate to their value.
Thus, by systematically examining the entire process of the "Old Worker Interview Records" from collection to utilization in the 1950s, we can not only understand how the political and social environment of that time influenced the collection of labor movement materials but also gain insight into how it affected the way informants "recounted" their past lives and revolutionary "experiences." This led to the formation of a "new" narrative that differed from the actual historical circumstances, allowing us to evaluate the multiple values and limitations inherent in these historical materials.
The study addresses the entire process of collecting and utilizing the "Old Worker Interview Records" from four dimensions: the collecting institution, the collection process, content analysis, and value assessment. By investigating the Shanghai Workers' Movement Historical Materials Committee and its achievements, the research reveals its connection to the national Party history collection movement and pre-1949 Shanghai labor movement investigations. This allows us to understand the political and social background of the material collection from an overall, macro perspective.
Regarding the collection process, we explore various factors such as direct and indirect motivations for the collection, including revolutionary tradition education, methods for finding informants like the Shanghai General Trade Union's organizational department surveys, oral interviews, and the "group portraits" based on informants' age, origins, etc. These angles help further clarify the impact of the collection's objectives on the process. Given the vast period and the extensive content covered by these materials, we use "topic modeling" to reorganize the text, exploring the committee's selection bias towards specific "experiences" while revealing the intrinsic relationship between the collection's objectives (such as propaganda and education) and the content of informants' "narratives" (such as participation in struggles).
Furthermore, this article evaluates the materials' value and limitations, analyzing issues such as memory distortion by informants, sample imbalance, and the narrative strategies that introduce various constraints. It also explores the unique role of these materials in supplementing the "marginal" events of major labor movement occurrences. Additionally, we observe how different materials related to informants' "narratives" from the 1950s and 1960s were reshaped and utilized flexibly in various contexts, which also allows us to analyze how the political and social environment impacted the content of these historical records.
By analyzing the collection and usage process of the "Old Worker Interview Records" and the various "experiences" recounted by informants, researchers can reassess their value and historical limitations from multiple perspectives, enabling more effective and informed use. Moreover, the material production process itself reflects the complex and multidirectional relationships that emerged between the old worker group and the state's top-down initiatives during the 1950s, as well as how the informants' "experiences" served as a vehicle to transfer the legitimacy narrative of pre-1949 revolution into the post-1949 government's legitimacy narrative. This enriches the study of 1950s Shanghai urban social history, among other fields.
Keywords: Labor Movement History, Oral History Materials, May 30th Movement, Three Armed Uprisings of Shanghai Workers, Shanghai Workers' Movement Historical Materials Committee.
